This invention relates to improvements in land forming and earth moving equipment having a load carrying container supported by land wheels and adapted to be hitched to a tractor or other prime mover.
1. Field of the Invention
In order to make more efficient use of irrigation water there has, over the last few years developed a practice which entails land forming extensive land areas which are to be irrigated. This involves levelling of the land to permit irrigation water to be evenly received thereon. The levelling of large areas of land is effected by the use of tractor drawn scrapers or planers and graders which normally use laser beam techniques to control the scraping and/or grading operations. The scraping operation requires the use of one type of equipment to remove earth and dump it in low areas, a grader being then used to finally level off the area. It has been proposed to provide earth moving equipment capable of operating both as a scraper or as a grader.
Whatever equipment is used in these land forming operations, relatively heavy, powerful and costly equipment is required in view of the large quantities of earth to be moved and, consequently, efficient operation of such equipment is necessary to economically achieve the aims of the land former operations.
The principal object of the present invention is to provide an improved construction of land forming and earth moving equipment which will operate more efficiently and effectively as a scraper or as a grader.
2. Description of the Prior Art
According to the invention, earth moving and land forming equipment includes an open frame formed as a forward section and a rearward section pivoted together on a transverse axis, the forward section adapted to be connected at its forward end to a tractor draw bar and the rear of the rearward section being supported at each side by land wheels, the wheels on each side being carried on an arm pivotally on said rearward section, a fixed scraper blade at the pivoted end of said rearward section, a load carrying container behind the scraper blade, hydraulic rams connected between the said forward and rearward sections, on each side of the frame pivot to effect raising and lowering movements to said pivot and thus to the scraper blade.
Preferably there are two pairs of land wheels on each side.
The equipment of the invention above described may operate as a scraper and as a grader, however, in order to increase its effectiveness as a scraper there may be included between the wings in the forward frame section an apron in the form of an open sided container arranged to increase the load carrying capacity of the equipment, the upper end of which is pivotally supported at each side by connected cranks, control pins at the sides of the apron extend through guide tracks, formed in the wings, to engage the ends of hydraulic rams arranged to move the control pins along the guide tracks thereby to move the apron from a lower operative position to an inverted inoperative position where the apron is clear of the load carrying container as it assumes its load dumping position.
One or more transverse members of the forward frame section may have pivotally mounted thereon a plurality of ripper tynes, preferably arranged in staggered formation, said tynes are held in a raised inoperative position by an hydraulically controlled pivoted bar or plate, which upon release, allows the tynes to assume an upright position for ripping the soil in advance of the scraper blade and thereby assisting the operation of said blade, the ripper tynes may be arranged to be individually or connectively retracted from the operative position.
The land wheels supporting the rearward frame section are preferably carried on arms pivotally mounted within the said frame section, the load carrying container being recessed on each side to accommodate the forward pairs of wheels on each arm. Preferably each wheel of each pair is mounted on opposite sides of the arm and with the axes of each wheel pair offset with respect to the other. The pivot mounting of one of the wheel carrying arms may be cranked and under the control of an hydraulic ram so that the transverse angle of the container may be varied as required.
In order that the invention may be more readily understood I shall describe one form of the equipment in relation to the accompanying drawings, in which: